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Culture warrior Rick Santorum returned to Alabama last night

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Santorum, who won Alabama's GOP primary in March, spoke at the annual dinner of the Alabama Policy Institute.

Photo by David Garrett.

Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who won Alabama’s GOP primary on March 13–briefly making him the party’s favorite–was back on friendly ground in Birmingham Thursday, but said he was not yet ready to toss his hat in the ring for 2016.

The right wing culture warrior and former Pennsylvania United States Senator, who said on CNN earlier this week that he was “not ruling out” another bid for president in 2016, was not quite ready to announce anything before the new Congress has even been sworn in.

“Well, I have not ruled it out, but there is a long way to go,” he said at a press conference preceding his keynote address to the conservative Alabama Policy Institute’s annual dinner at the Cahaba Grand Conference Center off U.S. 280 east.

“I don’t want to set a record for earliest presidential announcement,” he said. “There are a lot of records I wouldn’t mind setting, but that’s not one of them.”

“But Alabama got it right,” the 54-year-old former congressman laughed. “We certainly appreciate the support we got from Alabama and Mississippi, which we also won on that election night.

“I think the process worked pretty well. We had very spirited and competitive primaries in a number of states that gave the voters a choice about who they wanted to support, and I think the primary process wrapped up in plenty of time to give the candidate who won to move forward and wage a very competitive campaign,” he said of the GOP primary process that eventually settled on former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

“Obviously, I would have wished the primary had gone a little bit differently in the end, but look, I had very little money and organizational structure starting that campaign and in most countries and places that would doom you to failure.”

But Santorum insisted his campaign, emphasizing family values and opposition to gay marriage and abortion, achieved its goal.

He obliquely criticized Romney for not placing his emphasis on such values, choosing to wage a campaign based on economic issues almost exclusively.

“We ended up winning 11 states and that allowed us to bring some issues to the floor that, candidly, had Governor Romney continued on with and looked at the strength of our campaign, would have made him more successful,” he said.

“I think the message we had on the importance of the economy and how stable families and strong commitment to marriage was very important in building the economic strength of this country in the past,” Santorum said. “Again, our message resonated in the country–maybe not in New York and the West Coast–but it would have been very helpful in Ohio and Florida, which we as a party did not win.”

Despite the fact his party lost the presidential sweepstakes for the second cycle in a row, Santorum insisted that the GOP is in good shape with control of the governors’ mansions and legislatures in 37 states.

“We really have an opportunity to see in these states policies of limited government and people who are trying to build strong families and form strong communities,” he said.

“If you look at the states that are doing really well, they are the states that have Republican governors and Republican legislatures. One place you look is at the Alabamas of the country, the Texases of this country that are implementing the founding principles of this country.”

Santorum, who worked in a bipartisan manner with former President Bill Clinton to pass welfare reform in the 1990s, said that despite the current logjam in Congress, there is reason to hope the so-called “fiscal cliff” can be avoided if the president shows leadership.

“It’s about what is fair,” he said of the showdown over the expiration of President George W. Bush-era tax cuts on Jan. 1. “We should not tax some people more and some people less…

“I would argue we need to set very divisive class warfare issues aside and focus in on what’s going to be in the best interest of the country.”

While Santorum said he does not want to ignore the role of the people, who just elected a Democratic president for the second time in a row, in forestalling a financial catastrophe, “it takes leadership.

“Look, the President of the United States has to lead,” Santorum said. “He can not farm this one out or sub this one out to do. The President of the United States has to go out and clearly articulate the vision. He’s not running for office again–at least I hope–and this is his chance to go out there and lay on the table what the country needs and let him take the hits.

“That’s what leaders do,” Santorum said. “This president is known for leading from behind on foreign policy and in this negotiation on the fiscal cliff if he leads from behind, we are going to end up in the same mess we are in in the Middle East.”

The Alabama Policy Institute is a conservative think tank more than two decades old and is headed by Gary Palmer, who provides op-ed pieces for newspapers across the state.

Its annual gala dinner was supported by organizations such as the Alabama Farmers Federation, the Alabama Forestry Association, AT&T, Blue Cross and Blue Shield and several other major Alabama businesses and lobbying organizations, all of which purchased tables for the event.

Palmer said Santorum has spoken before to the API and would be “a very competitive” candidate for the Republican Party nomination should he chose to run in 2016.

“But I certainly am not expecting him to make any announcement along those lines tonight,” Palmer said before the dinner, which was closed to the press.